World Keeper

Chapter 523: Advancing the Timeline

I had to admit, it was a surprise when my mirror suddenly went dark. As if a shroud had been cast over the image. At first, I was worried that he had found a way to completely counter my tracking mirror, but soon realized that wasn’t the case.

If the mirror was completely countered, it would have broken. The fact that it had only gone dark meant that there was simply an ability temporarily suppressing it. As long as I waited patiently, it shouldn’t take too long before the mirror reconnects.

And sure enough, just as I was thinking about, the view changed again. This time, it was a wide, grassy plains. The invader I had tagged was walking along it comfortably, but… I could tell that something was wrong as soon as I sensed the location of the mirror. My lips curled up in a bitter smile.

Am I going to lose him again, just like that? I could tell that he was in Lorek. More importantly, he was in the deep, unexplored regions of Lorek. The area where the higher ranked star beasts appeared.

This wasn’t me looking down on his strength. Even the cultivators of Lorek themselves don’t venture too far from town, unless they are in groups with powerful individuals protecting them. That was why less than one percent of Lorek was currently inhabited, barely a few dozen cities. For him to survive in Lorek on his own, he would need to be in constant battle mode, even if he was a powerful invader.

As that thought occurred to me, there was a flash of green in the mirror. The man fell silently to the ground, split in two halves. A giant insect at the Nova Merge stage appeared in front of it, fresh blood dripping off the blades on its arms.

Shaking my head, I was about to dismiss the mirror, given that my target had been killed. Thankfully, I waited for just a moment, as he vanished again. After a brief search, the mirror refocused on… Deckan? He really gets around.

What I saw in the reflection of the mirror now was a priestess standing over him, rapidly repairing his body. Without hesitation, I created a second mirror to tag her as well. She was clearly a powerful healer for the invaders, possibly even the one responsible for their transportation given the fact that she was already prepared to receive the other invader.

“That makes two.” I muttered to myself, watching the pair of mirrors. As long as I had the priestess tagged, I would have the chance to tag anyone else who was inexplicably brought to her in such a way.

Grayson groaned, standing up and making sure that everything was back where it was supposed to be. Losing one of his weapons was unfortunate, but he could just try to get one of the guildmates to replace it if they found suitable materials. Let’s try this again.

The priestess in front of him nodded, pulling out a blue potion to recover her energy. Resurrections took a great strain on her, as they were not a class ability, but rather one she simply learned by unlocking the healing skill tree. It was this skill tree that allowed her to impersonate a priestess of Udona as she had.

Ready. Once her energy was full, she teleported Grayson once again. Her eye twitched when she saw where she had sent him this time. The man had appeared in a dense jungle, standing next to… a spaceship. So, another teleport was sent out.

His next appearance was on a hilltop in an unfamiliar land. Remembering his first encounter with Lorek, he immediately went on alert. Just as the priestess was deciding whether or not to move him again, he caught sight of a town nearby. Not the damaged buildings from before, but a proper, thriving town.

With a sigh of relief, he began moving towards the town, wanting to see what race the inhabitants were so that he could blend in and assume a new identity. What he saw was a rather peculiar mix. Almost exactly one half of the residents appeared to be lycans, while the other half were… just about anything imaginable.

That’ll be interesting to see how he tries to fit in in Kione without a familiar. I grinned at the thought of that, before shaking my head. The familiar summoning ceremony wasn’t too hard, and was a matter of public knowledge. It was even possible that they had already learned the skill.

Regardless, I had other things to worry about. I had nine hundred and ninety-nine problems, and he was just one of them.

Another month passed, with more skills becoming available on the guild store. Finally, the third tier of both runic and geometric magic was added, as was the advanced skill tree for various crafting professions. When Grayson saw this, he gave a relieved nod. Everyone, we’re entering phase two.

With that command, various craftsmen disappeared from all over the world. Not enough to really take note, unless you knew what you were looking for. With the start of phase two, they would begin creating bases for themselves, locations that could be used to launch their offensive against the world.

Where phase one took two months to complete, phase two was much faster, able to be completed within only seven days. After these seven days, it was time for phase three.

I looked towards my wall of mirrors in annoyance, all of them having turned black. In the last little while, I had managed to tag five more people that had been teleported to the priestess for healing, giving me a total of seven mirrors. If I counted the three that I had initially been tracking with my world sight, that was a total of ten invaders that I was monitoring.

Now, one by one, I saw them each performing the same action. Tapping on some invisible window in front of them, waiting for a blue ring of light to form around their feet, and then… black.

Thinking that they might have simply suppressed my mirror’s connection again, I even deployed my world sight to investigate their previous position. But, all I found was an empty room every time. They all moved somewhere, somewhere which blocks my mirrors from detecting them.

“Alright, everyone here?” Grayson asked, seeing the teleport beacon of the guild hall lighting up again, the last of his members stepping through. “Blaque, how is the setup? Any interference from the dungeon?”

A human man stepped forward, shaking his head with a smile. “The instancing is just fine.” Blaque was a rather well-built man with thick muscles, carrying an oversized hammer over his shoulder. Next to him was a curvaceous woman with silver hair, smiling towards him. “I set up the usual assortment. Anti-detection, anti-divine, etcetera. We have void energy generation and teleport beacons all over Earth.”

“Okay, then.” Grayson nodded pleasantly. “You and Serin can take a few days to relax. For now, your job’s done.” The silver haired woman cheered at that, throwing her arms around Blaque.

Grayson, meanwhile, looked around within the large meeting room. It had the appearance of stone, but he knew better, and it was large enough to house all one thousand members. “Everyone, it’s time to start phase three. Is there anyone here who hasn’t done a wild dungeon run before?”

As he looked over his guild members, he did see a few raising their hands, to which he nodded. “Then, I’ll go over the requirements again, so pay attention.”

“Wild dungeons are inherently different from normal dungeons due to the presence of the Dungeon Keeper. This is the final boss, a boss that has varying mechanics depending on the dungeon, but always follows a single rule. This rule is that they have all of the greatest abilities from their world.”

“Let’s say for instance, our world was a wild dungeon.” He gestured one hand towards the kitsune priestess who had yet to undo her disguise. “If Fleece is a level one hundred Chaos Space, and is the highest level of that class in the world, that means that the Keeper of our dungeon would have that ability as well. Similarly, my Overlord class, Blaque’s Blacksmith, and so on.”

“This makes battling the Dungeon Keeper head-on a suicidal feat. Even if we charged at him now, with all of our numbers here, at least half of us would be killed. However, this also opens up a mechanic to weaken the Dungeon Keeper. This is why we spent so long gathering information on this world.”

“In order to weaken the Dungeon Keeper, we have to find and kill the strongest members of each class in the dungeon. Doing so will ‘reset’ the Keeper’s level in that class to the next strongest.”

Saying this much, Grayson took a deep breath. “Now… as you might realize, this will only cause a minimal drop in power for the most part. To really hit him, we’ll need to target exceptional geniuses, or classes that are not widely used.”

“Our first target, and the one that will likely weaken the Keeper to the greatest extent, is this woman.” Grayson grabbed a paper in front of himself, tapping its cover a few times. A large image projected itself above his head of a woman with an ample figure in a red dress, with blood red hair.

“The Empress of Bloodhaven. According to our research, she is the oldest and most powerful member of a lesser-used class known as Martial Spirit. If we get rid of her, we should be able to shave off a decent chunk of power from the Keeper. Most importantly… she is not a goddess, which makes her a far more accessible target.”

Several guild members nodded their head seriously, while others were eyeing the empress’s figure. It was clear what the latter group was thinking, that it was a shame that they had to kill her.

“The Empress has a known, constant location. We will storm the capital of Bloodhaven and raid her palace. Fleece, you’ll remain here on standby to activate the evacuation teleport if things go bad.”

“Where did you all run off to.” I muttered, unable to find any trace of the invaders. Whether it was the ones I was watching, or those that the ninjas had their eyes on, they all simply vanished without a trace. No matter what, I couldn’t help but have a bad feeling about this.

Eventually, nine of the ten mirrors reacted at once. The only one that remained dark was the one that targeted the priestess. Aside from her, everyone appeared in a single location. More importantly, they were no longer wearing any disguises, and had appeared in full battle gear. As soon as they appeared, they began launching devastating attacks onto their surroundings.

As for their location… Oh hell no! I stood up from my throne, my face contorted in anger. Tsubaki saw that expression, her tails immediately standing straight. “My Keeper, shall we head to battle?”

“Just me this time.” I told her with a shake of my head, seeing the red cityscape of Bloodhaven quickly being reduced to ruins. “I’m on a rescue mission.” After saying that, I teleported myself directly to Scarlet’s palace.

Understandably, Scarlet herself was not in her throne, and was currently moving to the gate of her palace at a rapid pace. Fast enough that she directly bumped into me when I appeared before her. “F-father, I apologize, but I do not have time to talk at the moment.”

“I know.” My response was simple, and even I could feel a trace of coldness from it. “But they’re here for you, Scarlet.” Scarlet was the only one that they could be here for. Letting her go out to fight would just be falling into their trap. “Let me handle this.”

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